God, our chief jailor, as he himself is invisible, so useth he in his punishments invisible instruments.  And therefore are they not of like fashion as those the other jailors use, but yet of like effect, and as painful in feeling as those.  For he layeth one of his prisoners with a hot fever as ill at ease in a warm bed as the other jailor layeth his on the cold ground.  He wringeth them by the brows with a migraine; he collareth them by the neck with a quinsy; he bolteth them by the arms with a palsy, so that they cannot lift their hands to their head; he manacleth their hands with the gout in their fingers; he wringeth them by the legs with the cramp in their shins; he bindeth them to the bed with the crick in the back; and he layeth one there at full length, as unable to rise as though he lay fast by the feet in the stocks.

A prisoner of another jail may sing and dance in his two fetters, and fear not his feet for stumbling at a stone, while God’s prisoner, who hath his one foot fettered with the gout, lieth groaning on a couch, and quaketh and crieth out if he fear that there would fall on his foot no more than a cushion.

And therefore, cousin, as I said, if we consider it well, we shall find this general prison of this whole earth a place in which the prisoners are as sore handled as they are in the other.  And even in the other some make as merry too as there do some in this one, who are very merry at large out of that.  And surely as we think ourselves out of prison now, so if there were some folk born and brought up in a prison, who never came on the wall or looked out at the door or heard of another world outside, but saw some, for ill turns done among themselves, locked up in a straiter room; and if they heard them alone called prisoners who were so served and themselves ever called free folk at large; the like opinion would they have there of themselves then as we have here of ourselves now.  And when we take ourselves for other than prisoners now, verily are we now as deceived as those prisoners would be then.

VINCENT:  I cannot, uncle, in good faith deny that you have performed all that you promised.  But yet, since, for all this, there appeareth no more but that as they are prisoners so are we too, and that as some of them are sore handled so are some of us too; we know well, for all this, that when we come to those prisons we shall not fail to be in a straiter prison than we are now, and to have a door shut upon us where we have none shut upon us now.  This shall we be sure of at least if there come no worse—­and then there may come worse, you know well, since it cometh there so commonly.  And therefore is it yet little marvel that men’s hearts grudge much against it.

ANTHONY:  Surely, cousin, in this you say very well.  Howbeit, your words would have touched me somewhat the nearer if I had said that imprisonment were no displeasure at all.  But the thing that I say, cousin, for our comfort in the matter, is that our fancy frameth us a false opinion by which we deceive ourselves and take it for sorer than it is.  And that we do because we take ourselves for more free before than we were, and imprisonment for a stranger thing to us than it is indeed.  And thus far, as I say, I have proved truth in very deed.